We estimate the effect of the introduction of the UK’s National Living Wage in 2016, and increases in it up to 2019, using a new empirical method. We apply a bunching approach to a setting with no geographical variation in minimum wage rates. We effectively compare employment changes in each...

This report examines how household incomes were changing in the UK up to the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how other measures of household living standards have changed over the course of the pandemic. In particular, we use the latest official data covering years up to 2019-20 to provide a...

This report examines how material living standards - most commonly measured by households' incomes - have changed for different groups in the UK, and the consequences that these changes have for income inequality and for measures of deprivation and poverty. This is the 22nd annual report...

This report examines how living standards - most commonly measured by households' incomes - have changed for different groups in the UK, and the consequences that these changes have for income inequality and for measures of deprivation and poverty. In this latest report, we focus in particular...

An increasing proportion of people towards the bottom of the UK's income distribution are in a household where someone is in paid work. Working households comprised 37% of those below the official poverty line in 1994-95 and 58% in 2017-18. Much of that increase is due to trends that seem...

The recent surge in inflation, driven by spectacular increases in energy prices, has driven sharp falls in household living standards, huge government intervention to try to mitigate it, and serious policy headaches. As such it continues to be the backdrop behind many of the most pressing issues...